


the knowing

by twocrabs



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (including me i'm still mad and sad), Angst, Everyone is Mad, Mourning, Post S4, The Truth Hurts, This is NOT a fix-it fic, budding friendship, everyone is sad, i guess, i swear to god if these two don't have some kind of goddamn catharsis next season, weeping wailing gnashing of teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 06:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18794683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twocrabs/pseuds/twocrabs
Summary: “You’re both such useless fucking romantics. In opposite directions, sure. But the same. Kinda.”Alice straightens herself. Sets her expression, feels her cheeks redden. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”“These stupid declarations. You want to honor his memory. That’s nice. He was always—” and he takes another long drag. “He was always saying shit like. Like." Eliot swallows. "Like he hoped he’d die first.”





	1. the telling

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit is due to Emma, my fucked-up-idea muse. 
> 
> I guess I'm still worked up about this, huh.

He’s sitting there, cross-legged on the floor outside the door, when she gets back to her office. Alice had been out running some errands: a few days between the library’s other locations, and the deepest bowels of her own branch, and a magically significant swamp in Scotland, and a suburb of Princeton. It was probably only a few hours back at her branch, but there’d be no way to know how long he’d been waiting. 

At any rate, Eliot is there, eyes down, his hands in his lap, dressed in the same clothes he was wearing the last time she saw him. How much time had passed in Fillory since then? She does the mental math and flips through her keys one-handed, a stack of books under her arm. A week for her, two weeks for him? Just short of that? Enough time for full outfit rotation, certainly—black shirt, black vest, black jeans, black boots—but they’re rumpled and dusty and unbuttoned in a way that suggests that’s probably not the case.

“Took you long enough,” he says, with none of the bite she was expecting. She opens the door, and he hauls himself to his feet, slowly, painfully, a hand on his stomach. 

He follows her in, sitting in the chair opposite her desk, one leg up on the seat, with his chin on his knee. She places the books on the desk in front of him, and hangs her keys on a little hook on the wall before sitting to face him. With a curl of his fingers, a cigarette materializes between his lips. While she digs through her desk drawer for a sticky note, he tries to light it, snapping his fingers clumsily between his cupped hand and his mouth. 

“Please don’t smoke in my office,” Alice says, looking up at the sound of sparks. 

He huffs, and tucks the cigarette behind his ear, and wraps his arms around his bent leg. “So you found them?” 

Still hunched over and rummaging through one of her side drawers, she pauses for a moment at the tone of his voice. It’s flat again, a single note, barely even the upswing of a question mark. “Um. Yeah.” She closes the drawer, giving up on the search for now, and sits up, clearing her throat. 

“This,” she says, placing a hand on the topmost book. “Is the most up-to-date history of Fillory the library has access to. They figured out the printing press pretty recently, which is good, but it’s very monarch-centric, so.”

“Perfect,” Eliot says, still flat, still wrong—

“And this is the last remaining copy of a Brakebill’s textbook on bond-breaking from 1951. I couldn’t find anything earlier than that, unfortunately.” Eliot reaches for it, and the spine crackles when he opens it. Alice winces. “Please be careful with that. I’m loaning it from a private collection, and—”

“I won’t hurt your book, Alice,” he says and flips, admittedly more gently, to the index. He stares intensely at the first page, blinking, blinking, until his eyelids fall closed. The book slips out of his hand. He jumps at the sound of it hitting the floor. Tossing his head back, he sighs, lunging, challenged by his leg, and, groaning, reaches for the book. 

“This last one….is an advanced readers copy…” She watches him, moving slowly, like he’s swimming through molasses. “Of a new book by Chernow….on historic revolts—Eliot are you okay?” 

Eliot’s head snaps up, and he looks at her, all of a sudden in focus, daggers in his eyes. He shakes his head and blinks again, softening, dulling, slowing. He slaps the textbook back on the desk, and drags the massive Chernow into his lap, rubbing a hand over the disclaimer—”UNCORRECTED PROOF”—embossed on the cover.  

“Eliot?” she says again, more forcefully. “ _ What’s— _ ”

“Are you?” he says, soft, inflectionless, not looking up from the book.

“What?” 

“Are you...okay?” and he looks up at her again, up through his lashes, past his lowered brows, past the hair falling in his face, the curls he still hasn’t trimmed since he got his body back. There are dark circles under his eyes, deep and purple, like he’d been punched. 

Alice recoils in her chair a bit, her fingernails digging into the leather of the armrests. It’s an absurd question, she thinks. Of course she’s not  _ okay _ , but she doesn’t have time to be a mess, either. She has an interplanar organization to manage. She has people relying on her. She has—

“I don’t,” she starts, and swallows. “I don’t know what you’re asking.” 

Eliot sets the book back on her desk, and tries again to light his cigarette. “Have you,” he starts, talking through his teeth. “... _ Compartmentalized _ so much of your life that this is all just something else you can stick in a box and move on from?” It’s more words than she’s heard him say altogether in weeks. It’s also a terrible, awful, cruel thing, but his voice is still so dead, so monotone, that all the sting is taken out of it. Even so, she can feel a pit opening in her stomach. “Did you cry it all out that night?” The pit opens wider. “Did you chuck the mug and figure that was it?” Wider. “Or are you just so high on the power of your fancy new job that you forgot about the rest of the world?” Wider—

“I told his mother,” she says, and then stands up and reaches over her desk and grabs the cigarette out of his mouth. “Yesterday. I did that. By myself. Because I felt like  _ that _ was my job. And you were off in Fillory—”

“—Yeah a Fillory that got massively fucked up while—”

“— _ In Fillory. _ Doing god knows what.” Alice takes a deep breath. Eliot rolls his eyes, and another cigarette appears in his hand. “And. And Kady’s got her own responsibilities and Julia and 23 are out there fucking around with her her new magic and. And.” Her throat is dry. “And so I went. To New Jersey. And I told his mom everything. Alone.” 

A small sizzling noise, and the cigarette finally lights. Alice grits her teeth, and Eliot slumps back in the chair, starfishing, his limbs spilling out around him, and he inhales. 

“So. Forgive me for trying to find some fucking closure in that, okay? Forgive  _ me _ , for trying to make something of my life. For— _ honoring _ , for—for not wanting to  _ waste _ what he—”

“How romantic.” Eliot blows out, and Alice has to suppress a cough. 

“ _ What? _ ”

“You’re both such useless fucking romantics. In opposite directions, sure. But the same. Kinda.”

She straightens herself. Sets her expression, and can feel her cheeks redden. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“These stupid declarations. You want to honor his memory. That’s nice. He was always—” and he takes another long drag. “He was always saying shit like. Like. Like he hoped he’d die first.” 

Alice feels her heart skip a beat. 

“He tried to make it sound sweet.” Eliot is still a puddle in his chair, but his words are starting to have more color. He stares up at the ceiling, some of his little grey whisps morphing into perfect rings. “I guess it’s a thing people say to each other. When they’re together. For a long time.” He scrunches up his face, and pitches his voice up an octave. “ _ I don’t want to live a day without you! I hope I die before you do! _ ” He inhales again, long and shaky. “Did he say that kind of shit to you?”

Under her desk, Alice makes fists of her trembling hands.  _ Of course he had _ . Once. Heads under her comforter, curled in towards each other, legs twisted together and foreheads touching. Quentin had told her all of that, with his terrible, beautiful, aching smile, and terrible, beautiful,  _ needing _ eyes. Her stomach had soured at his words, and she had kissed his eyelids, and—awkward, but trying—asked him when he had last spoken to his psychiatrist. He had looked wounded, in the moment, but he smiled again, reached out to pull her against him, and they had fallen asleep. 

Of course he had told her. But how the hell did Eliot know that?

“—Always thought it was kinda. A little fucked up. A little…. _ macabre _ . Coming from him.” Eliot closes his eyes and chews on his bottom lip, the butt of the cigarette dissolving into dust from the end of his fingers. “But that’s that, I suppose. He got his wish this time. Only fair.” 

A bitter, heady confusion bubbles up through the ache in Alice’s chest.

“I get it now, I think. He had to do this the first time.” Eliot cracks his knuckles, one at a time. “And it fucking sucks, doesn’t it? The living? The fucking  _ surviving _ ? At least—” And then Eliot’s voice cracks, all at once. “At least he got….a  _ modicum _ of closure, he got. A fucking body to bury.” 

Alice watches him, brows knit close, and wonders. 

“I think you’re delirious,” she says gently. His eyes open but he doesn’t look at her. “You haven’t been sleeping. I can tell. You’re not….you’re not making any sense.”

Gazing up at the speckled drop ceiling, the gears in Eliot’s mind turn slowly, then click into place, and a year and a half of Alice’s ignorance, bordering on genuine stupidity, is suddenly, infuriatingly understandable. 

“Son of a bitch.” Eliot cranes his neck slowly forward. “That fucking asshole,” he says, staring at her, without a bit of venom. “That monumental fucking prick. That shit-for-brains never fucking told you.” At this, Alice notices, his dull, stagnant face cracks into a twisted little smile. 

“Eliot—”

“The mosaic. Past Fillory. The beauty of all fucking life.” The smile never touches his eyes, but there is a manic glint in them as he sits up in the chair. “Is none of this ringing a bell?” 

“You need to get some sleep—”

“Of course he didn’t. Fucking of course.” He throws his hands up, and for some reason, this is the first thing that sounds, to her, like Eliot again. “Why would he? You guys weren’t—and, and I had—” Something catches in his throat, and he blinks, and coughs, and takes a deep breath. 

And then he leans his elbows on the desk, folds his hands, and looks Alice directly in the eye.

“I fucking died in Fillory.” He pauses, gauging her response. She wants to challenge him, of course, but her face is stony. Curious. 

“I died trying to get the third key. I died, and I remember it.” He laughs, a little. “I fucking got old, and died fucking peacefully of old fucking age in my  _ fucking sleep _ . In Fillory. In a weird little fucked up time loop or pocket dimension or whatever the fuck.  _ And _ —” Eliot stands, unsteady. He presses his hand to his stomach, and winces, and then sets his palms on her desk, leaning over her. Looming. “And. And Quentin was there. And we were both just,  _ there _ . Forever. For fifty  _ fucking _ years we just  _ lived _ there. Until we were both so fucking old and so fucking  _ over _ the dumb little quest that  _ you— _ ” And he stabs a finger at her, but she doesn’t flinch. “—that you fucked up for us anyway. And, and….and.” He takes several deep breaths, tapping his fingers on the desk, his hair bouncing as he moves. “And he got  _ married! _ ” 

Alice never breaks his eye contact, but she recoils, slightly. And Eliot notices. 

“And they had a  _ baby! _ ” His eyes go distant, looking through her, and his violent little smile drops, and his hands go still for a moment. “Quentin’s….” he croaks. “He was  _ ours _ ….” And he shakes his head, going steely again. “And his wife died. And it was terrible. It was fucking  _ awful _ and it almost killed all three of us, but. But life kept happening. And the kid grew up. And left to start his own family. And we got older—we got—” Eliot punctuates his words, punching the desk. ”So. Fucking.  _ Old… _ .and.” Alice watches his eyes dart around the room, and the slight sway of his shoulders, and wonders for a second if he’s going to fall over. “And I loved him.” He blinks and blinks and blinks, fast, and inhales sharp. “And.” Rubbing his face, bristling the stubble of his week-old, nearly-beard. “And he loved  _ me _ . And we were  _ happy _ . And I  _ died _ . We were old and in love and fucking  _ happy _ and  _ someone _ —me—I still—fucking died anyway.” 

“Eliot….” She can’t process, can’t put it all together in the moment, wouldn’t know what to do with it if she could—but Eliot looks like he’s about to crawl out of his skin, and it still just hurts to see him like that. 

He picks up the books and tucks them under his arm. “He wanted to do it again. Here. Now. And I told him no because—” He swallows, purses his lips, looks up at the ceiling, and Alice can see his eyes glistening. “Because I thought you _had him_.” 

“That’s not—”

“Thanks.” He says, turning, walking towards the door. “For the books.”


	2. the living

Her office door slams shut. 

A beat. A long, quiet beat. 

Alice stares. At the door. At her desk. At the place where he had been. Eliot had always had a way of creating a vacuum when he left a room, and suddenly Alice’s ears ring with silence. 

She’s, stuck. Shock, probably. Her mind catching up. Eliot had been talking so fast and she had thought he was crazy for half of it, or trying to get a rise out of her, or drunk, or high or— Until the look in his eyes when,  _ We were happy _ . That was real. It hurt. But she knew it. And the knowing lifts her from her chair and hurtles towards the door before she can even think.

Outside her office the stacks go on for miles.  _ The exit _ , she thinks, through her haze of confusion and anger and— _ The portal to Fillory. East _ . And she turns right and shakes her head and screams.

“ _ Eliot! _ ” It rings through the halls, and everyone she passes looks at her like she’s killed someone, but she does it again. “ _ Eliot! _ Get back here!” She can’t run in these shoes, not properly, but she hoofs it as best as she can, passing rows and rows of shelves on her left, and office doors identical to hers on the right. “Eliot I  _ swear—! _ ”

And then a door swings open, and nearly knocks her over. The men’s restroom. Eliot, books under one arm, wiping his wet hands on his jeans. He looks at her, shocked, then exasperated. 

“What now?” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’m just—” And she grabs him by the front of his shirt, and practically throws him backwards into the bathroom. 

It looks, she notices with disappointment, exactly the same as the women’s room, except with one less stall, and two additional urinals. She shoves him against the grey tiled wall next to the trash can, and checks under the stalls to make sure they’re alone. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Eliot hisses through his teeth, as she storms back to him. He’s got one arm wrapped around his middle, the other still clinging to the stack of books. She stands, back to the sinks, between him and the exit, her hands on her hips. 

“Are you fucking with me?” she asks, pushing down the bubble of grief growing in her stomach. “You’ve got to tell me if you’re fucking with me, because—” she moves closer to him, looking up over her glasses at his tired face. “Because if you’re not. Then. I’m going to need more of an explanation than  _ that _ .”

His eyes are red. And his vest is unbuttoned. And his face is wet, and so is the collar of his shirt. He looks drawn, and drained, and like he’d rather be anywhere else, on earth or off of it, than between her and a bathroom wall. Sighing, he lifts his free hand, still damp, and floats it gingerly above her shoulder, before letting it rest there. 

“Alice….” he breathes, looks up, bites this tip of his tongue. “I do not have….the physical  _ or _ emotional energy….to  _ fuck with you, _ right now.” His hand stays where he put it, and he doesn’t look at her. 

She steps back, and smooths her skirt. He straightens away from the wall, grunting, and checks his reflection in the mirrors behind her, rubbing at his face. 

“So. It’s true, then.” A sick, familiar feeling rises in her chest. It’s white hot, but distinct from the loss and the rage, and cuts clean through any confusion. Eliot was there the last time she felt it, too. He had been asleep then, at least, his arm draped over Quentin’s chest, his crisp white sheets keeping them both just barely decent. “Everything you told me in there is true?” 

Eliot opens his mouth, and closes it. Grinds the heel of his hand into his eye. “Jesus  _ fuck _ , Alice— yes! God, yes! Why—why would I fucking lie about—”

She shoves him hard against the wall again. He twists away from her, scowls, drops the books. 

“ _ Ow _ , shit—what the fuck was that—”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” she nearly screams, both hands still balled into fists. “Why—why didn’t he tell me about this, when, when he—when we….” She puts a hand on her chest, tries to steady her breathing. “Why did he—”

“Maybe because he knew you’d react like this?” Eliot sounds so even, so calm, compared to her. She hates him for it. 

“That’s. That’s not true.”

“Oh,  _ please _ . You practically bit both our heads off after that stupid hookup.” She watches him walk past her to the sinks, a clearly painful hitch in his step. “Can you imagine,” and he undoes the top few buttons of his shirt, sucking air through his teeth. “If he had told you about—” Peering down his shirt, grimacing. “— _ fuck _ ,  _ Alice _ . I don’t take getting roughed up very well these days. I’m fucking bleeding—” 

Alice crosses her arms. Clenches her jaw. Watches, as Eliot opens his shirt the rest of the way, reaches across the sinks  to the dispenser, and presses a handful of paper towels to his stomach. In the reflection of the mirror, she catches a glimpse of the wound there, still raw looking, and tries not to acknowledge the pangs of guilt in her own gut. 

He turns, one hand holding the towels, the other outstretched, waving at her. 

“Fuck, forget  _ me _ , Alice. Can you imagine a reaction  _ other _ than murder if Q told you he fucked off to Fillory mid-quest and proposed to the first pretty girl to give him the time of day?” Eliot looks down when he says this, and blinks a few times, like he’d been surprised to hear it come out of his mouth.

“Don’t.” She doesn’t want to picture it. They’d never talked about marriage, with both their parents’ track records.  “Don't make this about her. Don’t drag— _ her _ , don’t—“

“Arielle.” Quiet. He peels the paper towels away from his skin, balls them up on the counter, starts buttoning his shirt back up. “She was good. For both of us.”

“Stop it!” She can’t stand that distant hurt on his face. It pisses her off. “Don’t…. _ deflect _ —I don’t  _ want _ to be mad at his  _ dead wife _ —I want to be mad at you!” 

“Why!” And he throws his hands up. “Why, why,  _ why _ ? Why  _ now _ ? What’s the fucking point? It doesn’t change—“

“It does!” And she’s in his face again, his hands, protective, between them. “It does change things. Because you got what I never did, okay? You got—a life! You got fourty—”

“Fifty.”

“— _ Fuck you, fifty years!”  _ She feels out of breath. Her heartbeat, loud in here ears.  “You got half a century and a fucking family and I got  _ nothing— _ ”

“Shut the fuck up, Alice.” A breath, a whisper. He looks down, away. She can see his jaw working, him swallowing. She takes a step away from him, and he lowers his hands, gripping the edge of the counter behind him. “You got him.” 

“What—”

“You  _ got him _ .” Loud, looking at her. “You got the  _ real _ him. The one with a fucking choice. Not Fillory-opium-high Quentin. Not, no-better-options Quentin. Not mosaic-obsessed and prematurely grey and—and  _ mostly _ unshowered and  _ profoundly _ unmedicated and  _ old  _ and—”  He gasps, and reaches for the paper towels again, stuffing them down his half-buttoned shirt. Pressing them, again, right above his navel. “That’s what I— _ fuck  _ that  _ fucking axe, god—”  _ And he screws up his face, his eyes shut, breathing shallow, holding very still. He exhales. “That’s what I got. A bunch of weird memories. Nineteen fucking stitches. A shit load of random, misplaced emotions that mean _ fuck all _ , now!” He laughs, a scoff, sharp and humorless. “ _ Decades— _ ” he breathes through his teeth, vicious and ragged. “—of baggage. With nowhere to put it down, because he’s still— _ fucking dead! Alice, I _ —!”

The door to the men’s room swings open. A round man with a short beard, wearing a bolo tie and a grey, ill-fitting suit rushes in, and makes eye contact with Alice. 

“Oh,” he says. He looks from her, nearly shaking with rage, to Eliot, pale and sweating and shoved up against the counter. “Howdy, boss. This is the gent’s isn’t it?” 

“Get out,” Alice growls. 

“But I—” 

And then both of them, together: “ _ Get out! _ ” 

The door closes slowly behind him, and through it, muffled, they hear the man warning others about entering. 

They sit, silent. Waiting for the other to make the first move. Eustace, with his dumb fucking tie and piss poor timing, had let all the air out of the room. 

Eliot takes the paper towels out of his shirt, and bunches them up again, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped. When it becomes clear it hasn’t, Alice pulls new ones out of the dispenser, and hands them to him.

“Thanks,” he says, quiet, and Alice moves to sit next to him on the counter. 

“That shouldn’t still be bothering you.” An uncomfortable beat. “Your stitches, I mean.” She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes, sniffing. 

“Well, I haven’t exactly been, uh. Resting. Like Lipson told me to.” 

“Is there nothing you can do magically? To help speed up the healing?” 

“Um.” Eliot takes a long breath, and crosses one leg over the other. Slowly, “Due to the nature of the weapon— _ apparently _ —the, uh. Incision….is resistant to all known methods of magical healing.”

“Oh.” 

“Yeah. No cheating this one.” 

Alice wipes her lenses with the hem of her shirt, and puts her glasses back on, and sighs. “That fucking sucks.” 

Eliot breathes out a half-hearted chuckle. “Yeah. Well. Not more than, like. Anything else.” And then he laughs for real. “Upside is Margo’s been, like,  _ super nice _ lately.” 

“I think she’s just glad to have you back.” Next to her, he shakes his head. “We’re all. I’m—” She swallows. “I’m glad to have you back.” She twists her fingers together and wonders how so much anger and hate and bitterness could have evaporated so fast. It’s not gone, she realizes, just peripheral. Just a little less important than the here and now. “I know it would have been. Just.  _ So _ inappropriate to celebrate—and like, when, right?—But I am, I’m really glad you’re back. Or. Or I was—”

“Alice.”  And his voice is thick. And she hates it. She hates the feeling of precariousness. How they’re all—they’re _both_ —just seconds away from _not okay_. She’d spent weeks trying to insulate herself from that feeling, and he had managed to drag it all back up. And maybe that was what did it to her. That he had been able to live with it, instead of hide from it. “I didn’t tell you all of that to hurt you. Or maybe I did. At first. But. I wanted you to know that. That you don’t have a _monopoly_ _on_ —or—” And he sighs. “Just….that we’re in the same boat, okay? We both fucked up. We both lost—”

“Yeah.” 

“....Yeah.” 

Then: “I just—” and, “You should—” Together. 

“No, go,” Eliot says, leaning his shoulder into hers. 

Alice takes a deep breath, does her level best to look up at him, but ends up muttering, fast and shaky into his arm, “He….loved you.” 

Eliot freezes. 

“I didn’t know—I,  _ clearly _ —I didn’t get the. The. The depth? I guess? But.” She has a stomach ache. She needs to lie down. Needs to call it a day already at 10:15am. “But there’s nothing he wouldn’t have done—I mean obviously we all would have, really, but—but you know.” Another deep, deep breath. “He would have done everything and more. To have you.” Fights down the lump in her throat. “Back here. Safe.” 

It’s still, in the men’s bathroom, in the east wing of the Neitherlands branch of the library. Alice notices, finally, the books she had retrieved for him, on the floor across the room. The antique, thankfully, had landed closed, unlike the Cherow. She moves, slightly, aiming to go and pick them up, but then Eliot’s arm reaches around her, and his hand is firm on her shoulder, and he’s leaning towards her. 

And he kisses the top of her head, his nose in her hair, like she’d seen him do with Margo a million times before. Like she can imagine him, crystal clear in her mind now, doing with Quentin. Like she could imagine him doing, in a distant future or a distant past, with a smaller version of himself, a smaller version of Q.  

And then he coughs, and is pulling the paper towels out of his shirt. And he’s buttoning himself up, and washing his hands, and straightening his hair in the mirror, and picking up the books off the floor. And then. 

“I gotta go. Gotta get back to Margo. With the research.” And he drums his fingers on the top of the textbook.

Alice, still perched on the edge of the counter, still, in the back of her mind,  _ processing _ : “Do you?” 

“What?” 

“Do you have to go back right away, I mean? With the time dilation between here and Fillory and—no offense, still—but you look fucking  _ exhausted _ , and—”

“Alice?” 

“I just. I’d like.” Nervous. Hands twisting. Thinking,  _ Don’t leave  _ and,  _ Not now _ still thinking, thinking,  _ thinking _ . “I’d like—I don’t have any meetings this morning. Or. Or nothing that Zelda can’t handle, at least, and. And I’d really, really,  _ really _ like. To hear about. About Q’s….” A breath. “About your son?” 

She can see a ripple go through him, waves over his face, subtle and fleeting, before landing on a tired little smile that finally reaches his eyes. 

And Eliot nods, small and fast. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sure, but.” His eyes dart around the room, and she’s worried, for a moment. “But do we have to have this conversation in the bathroom?” 


End file.
